That's how all the stories went-compact, apocryphal, told in rapid succession in the course of one evening, then
packed away for months, sometimes years, in my family's memory. Like the few photographs of my father that
remained in the house, old black-and-white studio prints that I might run across while rummaging through the closets in
search of Christmas ornaments or an old snorkle set. At the point where my own memories begin, my mother had
already begun a courtship with the man who would become her second husband, and I sensed without explanation why
the photographs had to be stored away.
the path of my father's life occupied the same terrain as a book my mother once bought
for me, a book called Origins, a collection of creation tales from around the world, stories of Genesis and the tree where
man was born, Prometheus and the gift of fire, the tortoise of Hindu legend that floated in s***e, supporting the weight
of the world on its back. Later, when I became more familiar with the narrower path to happiness to be found in
television and the movies, I'd become troubled by questions. What supported the tortoise? Why did an omnipotent God
let a snake cause such grief? Why didn't my father return? But at the age of five or six I was satisfied to leave these
distant mysteries intact, each story self-contained and as true as the next, to be carried off into peaceful dreams.
That my father looked nothing like the people around me-that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk-barely
registered in my mind.
In fact, I can recall only one story that dealt explicitly with the subject of race; as I got older, it would be repeated
more often, as if it captured the essence of the morality tale that my father's life had become. According to the story,
after long hours of study, my father had joined my grandfather and several other friends at a local Waikiki bar.
Everyone was in a festive mood, eating and drinking to the sounds of a slack-key guitar, when a white man abruptly
announced to the bartender, loudly enough for everyone to hear, that he shouldn't have to drink good liquor "next to a
n*****." The room fell quiet and people turned to my father, expecting a fight. Instead, my father stood up, walked over
to the man, smiled, and proceeded to lecture him about the folly of bigotry, the promise of the American dream, and the
universal rights of man. "This fella felt so bad when Barack was finished," Gramps would say, "that he reached into his
pocket and gave Barack a hundred dollars on the spot. Paid for all our drinks and puu-puus for the rest of the night-and
your dad's rent for the rest of the month."By the time I was a teenager, I'd grown skeptical of this story's veracity and had set it aside with the rest. Until I
received a phone call, many years later, from a Japanese-American man who said he had been my father's classmate in
Hawaii and now taught at a midwestern university. He was very gracious, a bit embarrassed by his own impulsiveness;
he explained that he had seen an interview of me in his local paper and that the sight of my father's name had brought
back a rush of memories. Then, during the course of our conversation, he repeated the same story that my grandfather
had told, about the white man who had tried to purchase my father's forgiveness. "I'll never forget that," the man said
to me over the phone; and in his voice I heard the same note that I'd heard from Gramps so many years before, that
note of disbelief-and hope.
packed away for months, sometimes years, in my family's memory. Like the few photographs of my father that
remained in the house, old black-and-white studio prints that I might run across while rummaging through the closets in
search of Christmas ornaments or an old snorkle set. At the point where my own memories begin, my mother had
already begun a courtship with the man who would become her second husband, and I sensed without explanation why
the photographs had to be stored away.
the path of my father's life occupied the same terrain as a book my mother once bought
for me, a book called Origins, a collection of creation tales from around the world, stories of Genesis and the tree where
man was born, Prometheus and the gift of fire, the tortoise of Hindu legend that floated in s***e, supporting the weight
of the world on its back. Later, when I became more familiar with the narrower path to happiness to be found in
television and the movies, I'd become troubled by questions. What supported the tortoise? Why did an omnipotent God
let a snake cause such grief? Why didn't my father return? But at the age of five or six I was satisfied to leave these
distant mysteries intact, each story self-contained and as true as the next, to be carried off into peaceful dreams.
That my father looked nothing like the people around me-that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk-barely
registered in my mind.
In fact, I can recall only one story that dealt explicitly with the subject of race; as I got older, it would be repeated
more often, as if it captured the essence of the morality tale that my father's life had become. According to the story,
after long hours of study, my father had joined my grandfather and several other friends at a local Waikiki bar.
Everyone was in a festive mood, eating and drinking to the sounds of a slack-key guitar, when a white man abruptly
announced to the bartender, loudly enough for everyone to hear, that he shouldn't have to drink good liquor "next to a
n*****." The room fell quiet and people turned to my father, expecting a fight. Instead, my father stood up, walked over
to the man, smiled, and proceeded to lecture him about the folly of bigotry, the promise of the American dream, and the
universal rights of man. "This fella felt so bad when Barack was finished," Gramps would say, "that he reached into his
pocket and gave Barack a hundred dollars on the spot. Paid for all our drinks and puu-puus for the rest of the night-and
your dad's rent for the rest of the month."By the time I was a teenager, I'd grown skeptical of this story's veracity and had set it aside with the rest. Until I
received a phone call, many years later, from a Japanese-American man who said he had been my father's classmate in
Hawaii and now taught at a midwestern university. He was very gracious, a bit embarrassed by his own impulsiveness;
he explained that he had seen an interview of me in his local paper and that the sight of my father's name had brought
back a rush of memories. Then, during the course of our conversation, he repeated the same story that my grandfather
had told, about the white man who had tried to purchase my father's forgiveness. "I'll never forget that," the man said
to me over the phone; and in his voice I heard the same note that I'd heard from Gramps so many years before, that
note of disbelief-and hope.